Ackley v. Labor Comm'n

Decision Date15 April 2021
Docket NumberNo. 20190806-CA,20190806-CA
Citation487 P.3d 882
Parties Lillian ACKLEY, Petitioner, v. LABOR COMMISSION and Lowe's, Respondents.
CourtUtah Court of Appeals

Stony Olsen and Michael G. Belnap, Ogden, Attorneys for Petitioner

Mark D. Dean and Kristy L. Bertelsen, Salt Lake City, Attorneys for Respondent Lowe's

Judge Michele M. Christiansen Forster authored this Opinion, in which Judge Ryan M. Harris and Senior Judge Kate Appleby concurred.1

Opinion

CHRISTIANSEN FORSTER, Judge:

¶1 Lillian Ackley challenges the denial of workers’ compensation benefits, asserting that the Utah Labor Commission (Commission) erred when it determined that she failed to show that her workplace activities constituted the legal cause of her injuries. She argues that the Commission should have evaluated her accident and injury as an idiopathic fall. We agree with Ackley, set aside the Commission's decision, and instruct it to revisit Ackley's claim under the idiopathic fall doctrine.

BACKGROUND

¶2 While working in the paint department near a key-making machine at Lowe's, a home improvement store, in December 2014, Ackley was attaching a sticker to a hammer that was to be placed on a shelf. She had a ganglion cyst

on the third finger of her right hand, a condition she had been diagnosed with in 2010.2 As Ackley was holding the hammer with her right hand, the tool started to slip, and she grasped it more tightly, causing extreme pain. She lost consciousness and fell down, hitting her head and shoulders on the concrete floor.3 Following the accident, Ackley was diagnosed with a closed head injury, a torn rotator cuff in her right shoulder, a non-healing scalp lesion, hearing loss, and left-shoulder pain. Ackley had surgery to repair her torn rotator cuff, and the injury to her ear eventually prompted the need for a hearing aid. Doctors who evaluated Ackley agreed that the fall led to the injuries identified above. After an evaluation, the Lowe's medical consultant did not specify the cause of Ackley's fall but opined that certain medications she was taking may have caused dizziness.

¶3 In April 2018, Ackley filed a claim for benefits with the Commission, alleging that her work activities led to her injuries. Lowe's did not dispute that she fell and was injured at work but argued that the fall was caused by a preexisting condition—the rupture of the ganglion cyst. Citing Allen v. Industrial Commission , 729 P.2d 15 (Utah 1986), Lowe's argued that Ackley's claim for benefits was "contingent on her demonstrating that her work activities leading up to her fall not only triggered the fall, but also involved extraordinary and unusual exertion."

¶4 After a hearing, an administrative law judge (ALJ) found that Ackley was injured when she gripped the hammer and experienced intense pain associated with irritation to the ganglion cyst

, causing her to black out and fall. The ALJ agreed with Lowe's that under Allen , Ackley bore the burden of demonstrating that her workplace activities both medically and legally caused the injuries for which she sought workers’ compensation benefits. See

id. at 25, 27 (explaining that "[t]o meet the legal causation requirement, a claimant with a preexisting condition must show that the employment contributed something substantial to increase the risk he already faced in everyday life because of his condition" and that "[u]nder the medical cause test, the claimant must show by evidence, opinion, or otherwise that the stress, strain, or exertion required by his or her occupation led to the resulting injury or disability"). The ALJ concluded that although Ackley had shown medical causation, she failed to demonstrate legal causation because the exertion of gripping a hammer is "both usual and ordinary" and "comparable to the exertion associated with typical nonemployment activities." Accordingly, the ALJ denied Ackley's claim for benefits.

¶5 Ackley filed a motion for review of the ALJ's decision with the Commission. She argued that the ALJ erred in focusing only on the act of gripping the hammer as the cause of her injuries rather than the entirety of the accident:

The industrial accident encompasses the entire event, not just the initial impetus. Indeed, if just the initial impetus, such as gripping a hammer or pressing a button, were the only events considered and an injured worker had to prove legal and medical causation for the initial impetus only and not the resulting events or injuries, then hardly any injured worker would ever recover.

The Commission rejected Ackley's arguments and affirmed the ALJ's decision, stating that "the absence of a legal causal connection between Ms. Ackley's employment and the intense right-hand pain she cited as the reason for losing consciousness and falling to the floor severs any causal connection between her work activity of gripping the hammer and her subsequent injuries from falling." The Commission also rejected the applicability of the idiopathic fall doctrine to Ackley's claim, noting that the doctrine requires a worker to fall "because of strictly idiopathic factors rather than a pre-existing condition aggravated by a work activity." See 1 Lex K. Larson, Larson's Workers’ Compensation Law § 7.04[1][b] (2020) (explaining that an idiopathic fall is one caused by an employee's preexisting internal weakness or disease).4

¶6 Ackley filed a motion for reconsideration. Citing Tavey v. Industrial Commission , 106 Utah 489, 150 P.2d 379 (1944), the seminal Utah case for the idiopathic fall doctrine, for the proposition that an injury sustained by an employee who becomes dizzy or unconscious and falls is compensable, Ackley urged the Commission to reconsider its decision "because Utah courts have stated that a fall, regardless of the cause of the fall, is an accident by itself." In its order denying this motion, the Commission noted that "even though Ms. Ackley did not clearly raise the idiopathic fall doctrine in her motion for review, the Commission still considered such theory as part of its analysis and addressed it." The Commission reiterated that Ackley's act of gripping the hammer did not involve "unusual or extraordinary exertion" sufficient "to serve as a legal connection between [Ackley's] injuries and employment": "The cause of the fall was idiopathic in nature as it was due to risk personal to Ms. Ackley rather than an unusual or extraordinary exertion required by her employment." But even though the Commission described the fall as idiopathic, it proceeded to consider Ackley's injury by analyzing whether it was caused by work-related exertion. Ultimately, the Commission determined that any increased risk of injury Ackley faced was because of her ganglion cyst

and not because of any workplace requirement. "[T]he work-related element of gripping the hammer was ultimately deemed insufficient to causally connect Ms. Ackley's fall to her employment because the increased risk of injury was supplied by her pre-existing right hand condition rather than workplace factors." Ackley now seeks review of the Commission's decision.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶7 On review we address only one issue: whether the Commission erred in rejecting the applicability of the idiopathic fall doctrine to Ackley's workplace accident.5 She argues that the Commission erred in applying Allen v. Industrial Commission , 729 P.2d 15 (Utah 1986), and instead should have applied the idiopathic fall doctrine and concluded that she established the requisite legal causal link between her employment and her injuries. "Whether the ... Commission correctly or incorrectly denied benefits is a traditional mixed question of law and fact." Intercontinental Hotels Group v. Utah Labor Comm'n , 2019 UT 55, ¶ 6, 448 P.3d 1270 (quotation simplified). However, the ultimate question posed here is the legal effect of the facts. And in the context of a legal-cause analysis in fall cases, the legal effect of a given set of facts depends on whether the injury was caused by an employee's employment and employs "an objective legal standard that we are in a better position to analyze than the Commission." Murray v. Utah Labor Comm'n , 2013 UT 38, ¶ 40, 308 P.3d 461. Thus, our review is non-deferential. See id . ¶¶ 40, 48.6

ANALYSIS
I. To be compensable, workplace injuries must result from an accident arising out of and in the course of employment.

¶8 Ackley argues the Commission erred when it denied her claim for compensation benefits under the Utah Workers’ Compensation Act. An injured employee is entitled to benefits if the employee is "injured ... by accident arising out of and in the course of the employee's employment." See Utah Code Ann. § 34A-2-401(1) (LexisNexis 2019). Thus, the statute sets forth two prerequisites to establish entitlement to benefits. First, the employee bears the burden of proving he or she was injured "by accident." See id. Second, the language "arising out of and in the course of the employee's employment," see id. , requires the employee to show "a causal connection between the injury and the employment," see Allen v. Industrial Comm'n, 729 P.2d 15, 18 (Utah 1986).

¶9 Our supreme court has clarified that the phrase " ‘arising out of’ ... requires that an accident be caused, in some sense, by an employee's employment." Intercontinental Hotels Group v. Utah Labor Comm'n , 2019 UT 55, ¶ 9, 448 P.3d 1270. That is, an "injury [is] compensable [if] it occurred while the employee engaged in an activity connected to the employee's work responsibilities." Id . ¶ 16. Furthermore, our supreme court has interpreted "arising out of the employment" as referring "to the origin or cause of the injury." Id. ¶ 9 –10 (quotation simplified).

¶10 As to the "course of employment," our supreme court has stated that "an accident occurs in the course of employment if it occurs in the time, place, and circumstances typical of the employee's employment." Id. ¶ 23 (quotation simplified). "To be embraced within the ambit of ‘course of employment,’...

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